As a Depression-era college graduate, Georgeanna Lipe parlayed her finely honed artistic skill into a practical career as a medical illustrator to supplement her husband’s $25-a-month income. In better economic times, she was a La Jolla homemaker who poured her creativity into crafts for her kids’ Brownie troop and junior theater.

And at age 86, her revived career suddenly took on new momentum. After traveling the world under the tutelage of renowned artists, the watercolorist opened a gallery in La Jolla to champion the work of local artists.

Mrs. Lipe, a longtime La Jolla resident, died of natural causes in her sleep on March 25. She was 102.

“She had God-given talent, and she did what she was born to do,” said daughter Susanna Aalbers of La Jolla. “She loved life, and she led a very charmed one.”

She was born in Nashville, Tenn., on May 21, 1909. She earned a bachelor’s degree in art and medical science in 1930 from Vanderbilt University, where she met her husband, JT Lipe, in anatomy class.

“At Vanderbilt, she was surrounded by men,” Aalbers said. “She loved men, and she was a flirt. She was what I would call in the 1920s an ingénue. She would be the first to get a permanent. She wore those cute little 1920s-type hats, furs and flapper stuff. Very fashionable.“

After college graduation, Mrs. Lipe and her husband moved to Rochester, N.Y., where he was a medical resident physician. Her husband earned $25 a month, which went toward the one-bedroom apartment they shared with another couple. It was 1934, and there were few jobs, especially for artists. Mrs. Lipe created the decorative lettering on church documents through a technique called illumination. She also worked part time sketching surgical procedures in the operating room for medical journals and research papers for the University of Rochester School of Medicine — a job she had previously done at Vanderbilt.

In 1936, JT Lipe answered a medical journal add by a La Jolla doctor who needed an associate.

“My parents didn’t even know how to pronounce La Jolla,” Aalbers said. “They just hopped in their little Model T Ford, and there they went sight unseen.”

They bought a La Jolla lot on Sea Lane for $2,200 and spent $8,000 to build their first home just steps from the ocean. The second beach home they purchased about 20 years later on Dunemere Drive for $63,000 is currently owned by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who bought it for a reported $12 million from a subsequent owner.

Mrs. Lipe raised three children, serving as a den mother for her son’s Scout troop and leader of Aalbers’ Brownie troop. She was an active volunteer with Meals-on-Wheels, Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla Candlelight Ball and La Jolla Presbyterian Church.

When her children were grown, she nurtured her artistic passion. She gravitated toward watercolors and often painted landscapes. She traveled the world with her sketchbook and studied under such leading watercolor artists as Dong Kingman, Roy Mason and Rex Bryant. Her work was showcased in exhibits throughout the country and her art was procured for several corporate and private collections such as Hospital Corporation of America and the Copley collection.

“She was always joyous, and I can remember her saying, ‘I just never worried about anything,’ ” said Joan McKasson, past president of the San Diego Watercolor Society, an organization of which Lipe was a charter member in 1964.

“She was very prolific,” said Trip Bennett, interim executive director of the La Jolla Historical Society. “In just about any building of any note here you’ll see her work.”

Bennett also described Mrs. Lipe as unconcerned with convention. When the La Jolla architect was remodeling Mrs. Lipe’s home and adding a studio, her house was uninhabitable for about five months. “She probably could have afforded to live anywhere,” he said.

But she opted to haul her bed into the empty ophthalmologist’s office of a rental property she owned, even though there was no kitchen or bathing facilities.

“She was in her early 80s, and she just said, ‘I’ll go down the street to the La Jolla Country Club to shower and eat,’ ” Bennett said.

Discouraged by the lack of galleries willing to promote local artists, Mrs. Lipe decided at age 86 to open The Artists Gallery on Girard Avenue in La Jolla. For eight years, the gallery exhibited many art forms including oils, sculptures and watercolors before it closed.

“She did it for her friends to give them a place to hang art,” Bennett said. “She certainly didn’t do it for the money.”

Mrs. Lipe is survived by her daughters Terry Jordan of Julian and Aalbers; son Steele Lipe of Virginia; six grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

Services have been held. The family suggests donations in her memory to the San Diego Watercolor Society or La Jolla Presbyterian Church.